Hold this L

How I learned to take away small wins from big loses

I used to think the only “wins” were ones that could be easily quantified,but more and more I began to see the value in the lessons learned from major moments of breaking something (more on those stories to come in future articles). The more I think back on lessons learned the hard way, the more I realized they always imparted on me a wisdom that I end up referencing further down the road. If the thought isn’t “this is just like that time I broke X”, it is “well, I don’t want to do this and break it, like I did that one time”.

There is something to be said about learning through failure, and as much as each failure is something we never want to deal with, learning to accept it (or “hold this L”) does lead to some immense growth. If nothing else, the experience is often quite humbling, and (at least for me) has served as a way of keeping me grounded, and reminding me that I still have plenty to learn.

Although the lesson is (hopefully) learned (somewhat regardless of one’s outlook), the real difficult part comes in learning to see the glass half full. I equate some of these harder lessons learned in tech, to some of the harder lessons I learned from my parents (particularly when I really messed up and discipline was all but guaranteed)…the act of learning the lesson completely sucked (and was usually, quite literally, painful) but I ultimately saw the glass as half full. Granted it wasn’t until I became a parent myself, and I’m way too stubborn to give my folks the satisfaction that they were right, but I learned.

I say all that to say, learn to “hold this L”. Don’t just count your wins, when it comes to work/projects/tinkering, but count the losses as well, because there’s probably a nugget of wisdom buried in there to take away from it.

Peace!